CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 201 km round trip from Toledo - roughly 3 h 05 in the saddle. On the way it passes Aranjuez Cultural Landscape, Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro and back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape.
Toledo sits inside a nearly closed loop of the Tagus, a granite gorge that makes the old city a natural fortress, and the first sight of it from the ring road is one that few riders forget. The Carretera de Circunvalación runs around the opposite bank, and its lay-bys and viewpoints, especially the Mirador del Valle, give the classic view: the Alcázar and cathedral on the skyline, the Alcántara bridge below, and the river shining in the gorge. El Greco painted that same view in the early seventeenth century, with stormy skies, and it is not hard to see why.
Read the complete High point near Toledo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Toledo is where the day begins. Next is Aranjuez Cultural Landscape.
Aranjuez is the green oasis of the dry Madrid plain, a royal town built where the Tagus and the Jarama rivers meet and where Spanish kings came every spring to escape the court. The palace, largely an eighteenth-century Bourbon creation, faces broad avenues and formal gardens, and the riverside parks of the Jardín de la Isla and the Jardín del Príncipe stretch for kilometres along the water, with fountains, statues, an artificial island and tall old trees. In 2001 UNESCO listed the whole thing as a cultural landscape, recognising how the kings shaped nature, agriculture and town planning into a single designed whole.
Read the complete Aranjuez Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Aranjuez Cultural Landscape comes up 28 km in. Next is Aranjuez Cultural Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Aranjuez Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
57 km in you reach Aranjuez Cultural Landscape. Next is Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro.
Riding into the centre of Madrid is not anyone's idea of a scenic route, but the Paseo del Prado makes up for the traffic. This broad, tree-lined boulevard, laid out in the eighteenth century under Charles III as a showpiece of the Enlightenment, runs from the Cibeles fountain past Neptune to the Atocha station, and along it stand three of the greatest art museums in the world: the Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and, a short walk away, the Reina Sofía with Picasso's Guernica. Behind the Prado, the Buen Retiro park spreads over more than a hundred hectares of gardens, lakes and avenues, once the grounds of a royal palace. In 2021 UNESCO listed the ensemble as the Landscape of Light, a recognition of the boulevard and the park as a planned urban landscape devoted to science, art and leisure.
Read the complete Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, about halfway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro sits at 113 km, about halfway. Next is back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro comes up 141 km in. Next is back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Aranjuez Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
170 km in you reach back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape. Next is back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Aranjuez Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape, late in the day. Next is Toledo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete High point near Toledo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 201 km.
Toledo → Aranjuez Cultural Landscape is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Aranjuez Cultural Landscape → Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro → back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape → Toledo is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.